May 6, 2015: Gwyn

The cicadas announced the beginning of summer, as usual. That whining, unearthly noise always took Gwyn back to the late summer evenings of her childhood, hiding under the porch with Sarah with stolen ice cream sandwiches. The cicadas, the honeysuckle, and the intense, soul-sucking humidity. Dear God, the humidity.  She wiped sweat, along with several bugs, off her face and continued down the trail. Served her right for waiting until evening to run. In the mountains, at least the mornings were bright and cool, the evenings muggy and warm. The trail, at least, was shaded. She wound down a portion of the mountains-to-sea trail that ran close enough to the city so that Gwyn could usually put in a few miles after work. Her feet automatically skipped over rocks and roots and down steep hills as her mind drifted.  Thank God the school year was almost over. Another year, another group of students who seemed more interested in their smart phones than in any classes, even gym. Especially gym. And it’s not like these kids had anything new to learn from health class. Hell, they could probably teach her a few things.  And no raise, as usual. Thank you, great state of North Carolina.

At least her runners were tolerable. Runners, even high-schoolers, were a generally likable and hard-working group, and this year’s bunch had proven more ambitious than usual. Several of her athletes were going to major universities with scholarships after impressive performances at the state meet. She grinned and put on a burst of speed going up the hill. She didn’t always work out with her runners, but when she did, she did not want to embarrass herself. Not that the advanced age of 29 was over the hill to anyone but high schoolers.

She enjoyed a few miles of blissful, thought-free running where her mind and body seemed content to just float and let the miles drift by. Only occasionally did a line of the latest Taylor Swift song play on repeat in her head. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a shape moving across the ground. Too large to be a squirrel �" a bear? No, too small and not black. Probably gray? If she didn’t know better, she would say it was a wolf, but there were no gray wolves in these woods, only red ones.   She tried to look again, and this motion diverted her attention from the trail and many rooty and rocky dangers. She felt her ankle roll outward and tried to right herself, but came crashing to the ground, barely bracing with her hands in time to avoid bashing her nose on a rock. Mentally cursing herself, she did a quick inventory of her injuries. Hands: stinging but OK. Ankle: sore but probably not broken. Knee: bleeding, probably bruised but not seriously injured. Gwyn sighed and pushed herself up. She could see a gap in the trees probably no more than a half mile away that indicated the Blue Ridge Parkway and her car. She hobbled the last bit down the trail as the shadows slowly lengthened. Dark came quickly in the mountains, and though she knew this trail well, she did not relish being caught out here at night. As the sun was setting, she dragged herself up the last hill and breathed a sigh of relief as her small blue SUV came into view. She hobbled for the door and pulled the keys out of the pouch in her shorts. Still berating herself for losing her concentration, she cranked the engine.

As she was driving down the parkway she started idly fingering her phone. After all of the lectures she had given her students, she knew better than to text and drive, but she was antsy and bored and wanted something to take her mind off of her throbbing ankle and palms. She flipped past Sarah’s number. It had been weeks since she had heard from her half-sister. This was not unusual �" Sarah had probably locked herself in a library somewhere with a gallon of coffee and had not even noticed the time passing. She had never understood the fascination with the past that her lead Sarah to pursuing history and anthropology as a post graduate degree. Maybe a desire for debt? Maybe not knowing your own history, a voice in her head said. She hit the button for Sarah’s number but only heard 5 rings, then voicemail. The antsy feeling continued as she drove back to her small house near town.

Moving to the mountains after her epic breakup with her longtime boyfriend Kevin had been incredibly scary, but after an amazing year of teaching and making new friends she was finally starting to feel at home. She pushed some spare shoes out of the way as she made her way inside, threw her dirty shoes into the mud room, and she made her way to the shower. Her palms and knee stung as she turned the shower on and stepped in, washing the blood and grime down the drain. She tried to relax under the stream of hot water but could not lull her mind into peacefulness. Where the hell was Kelli? Her new roommate was an artsy singer-songwiter type who was just starting to “make it,” but even in Asheville, Tuesday nights were usually slow. She toweled off, grabbed a microwave meal and some wine, and settled herself in front of the TV. Two cooking shows later and she was slowly drifting off.

She was running through the woods again. Impossibly fast, with branches flashing by her head. She was following someone, although she did not know why. As she came to the top of a rise, she finally saw it…the gray wolf she had seen from a distance earlier. It looked at her, then forward on the trail. She followed it to a clearing at the top of the hill. Greenery surrounded a stone structure with a two story main building with crenelated edges. A tower rose off the north side of the building. It looked familiar. Also familiar was the feeling of dread in Gwyn’s stomach she got while looking at the building.  The wolf wuffed at her impatiently and nosed a small side door open. Gwyn felt that she should follow the creature and silently slipped in behind him. The wolf padded forward to a spiral staircase and started down and down. The stairway opened into an underground chamber made of stone with a dirt floor and raised stone dais.  Men in dark hoods stood in a circle, chanting in a language that made the hair on Gwyn’s arm stand on end. She heard heavy footsteps behind her and started to turn around. She muffled a shriek, which became a full-blown scream of terror as one hand grabbed her arm and the other clamped over her mouth, cutting off the noise as she struck out with her arm, and heard a yell….a female yell?

Gwyn came sputtering awake and realized the person she was currently slapping was Kelli. “Woah, easy, hon,” came Kelli’s soft voice. “I heard you yelling your head off.” Gwyn’s heart pounded as she muttered an apology to Kelli. “You OK, girl? Bad dream?” Kelli asked, her mascara smudged and blue pixie cut standing on end. “Need me to stay and cuddle you to sleep?”

Gwyn groaned and threw a pillow at her friend. “I only bat one way, unlike some,” said Gwyn.

 Kelli waggled her eyebrows, “Your loss. It’s much more fun my way,” she pouted. “But if that’s the way it is, I’ll head back to my room shiver in my bed alone.”  

“It’s summer. The AC in this house sucks. You will sweat alone,” said Gwyn dryly. Kelli shrugged and bounced out of the room.

“It is damn hot. See you in the morning,” she said, blowing Gwyn a kiss.

Gwyn flopped back down onto her pillow. Kelli’s usual bubbly presence had taken the edge off of her anxiety. Kelli’s lack of personal boundaries and ability to talk at length on any subject had been overwhelming at first, but Gwyn had grown appreciative of her friend’s ability to pull her out of her own head.  She had been having this dream, or versions of it, for several months now, but this was the first time she had seen the inside of the building.  And the figure…

She wished that Sarah had picked up. Not that she would tell Sarah about her dream anyway. Sarah was into that dream interpretation, horoscope, new-age crap and would probably somehow interpret it to mean that Gwyn was going to meet a tall dark stranger. Sarah, with her blonde bouncy ponytail and petite curviness always had one boyfriend or another, and now that Gwyn was single, Sarah was practically salivating to set her up. Gwyn smirked to herself, imagining the look on a man’s face when he showed up expecting Sarah’s half-sister to be another Reese Witherspoon lookalike. Nobody ever believed they were related after looking at Gwyn, who stood five inches over Sarah’s 5’3 and was as dark as her sister was fair. And quiet as her sister was gregarious, Gwyn also thought, although both sisters shared a sharp temper when provoked.

The girls had different fathers, obviously, and had never met either one of them. And throughout the years, whenever the subject came up their mother became mysteriously deaf. Their mother was mysteriously deaf to many questions, including their unusual upbringing and what she had been doing for the past several years. Gwyn had received regular emails “checking in” but no details about her mother’s life had ever been included. Apparently she felt that her motherly duty to the girls did not extend past getting them both through high school, Gwyn thought bitterly. It appeared, though, that her mother had continued the nomadic lifestyle with which she had raised her daughters, never staying in the same place for longer than a year. They had both finally rebelled and refused to leave North Carolina, of all places. Gwyn had been a senior and Sarah a junior in high school when Gwyn realized they would need to establish residency in some state in order to get in-state tuition. They had both attended UNC-Chapel Hill, and Sarah had never left. Gwyn had needed to go somewhere with fresher air. A fresh start in the mountains. She felt her thoughts drifting towards Kevin and willed them away. She forced herself to think about the trails, and the trees, and the mountains.